Day: October 14, 2014

By Joe Bendel. During WWII, Sweden’s official neutrality was not always pretty. Yet, despite the calculated concessions granted by their government, some Swedish diplomats became heroes for their courage and compassion. For his efforts rescuing tens of thousands of Jewish Hungarians, Raoul Wallenberg vanished to the world while in the custody of the Red Army. However, Raoul Nordling was awarded the Croix de Guerre for convincing Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz not to raze the city of Paris as he withdrew his forces. Some historians question that narrative, but Cyril Gely chose to print the legend in the stage play he and Volker Schlöndorff have now adapted for the screen. A very French drama plays out between the Swedish diplomat and the German officer in Schlöndorff’s Diplomacy, which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Choltitz was one of the few old school Prussian officers not fatally embroiled in the Valkyrie Plot against Hitler. Although he often had profound misgivings, he always followed his orders, at least thus far. With the Allies rapidly approaching, Choltitiz is supposed to blow up key points of infrastructure, leaving the city in smoking wreckage. All the charges are set, but Swedish Consul Nordling has furtively slipped into Choltitz’s converted headquarters in a luxury hotel, using a secret passageway designed for Royal assignations. Before morning breaks, Nordling will try to convince and cajole Choltitz to disregard his orders, allowing Paris’s great cultural and architectural treasures to survive the war.

Essentially, Diplomacy is a one-set two-hander (with a few subordinate offers and a shanghaied engineer walking through from time to time), but the stakes could not be higher. It is a great chess match premise, but even though the narrative is completely stacked in Nordling’s favor it is Choltitz who emerges as the far more compelling dramatic figure.

As played by the ever reliable André Dussollier, Nordling is the suave diplomat arguing on the side of the angels. In contrast, Choltitz is a pricklier individual. Although he remains an inspirational figure for his rank-and-file, he is clearly troubled by the atrocities he duly participated in. Redemption always makes good movie fodder, but there are pressing reasons for Choltitz to acquiesce to madness dictated from above, which he will eventually reveal to Nordling.

Dussollier plays the diplomat with instantly credible intelligence and sophistication. Nonetheless, Niels Arestrup does all the heavy lifting and should earn the majority of critical laurels for his work as Choltitz. While he is a rough bull of a man, he conveys the multitude of internal conflicts roiling inside him.

The maybe-not-quite-as-leftwing-as-he-used-to-be-Merkel-supporting Schlöndorff opens up the film as best he can, but a certain amount of staginess is unavoidable—and perhaps even desirable for such a claustrophobic one-on-one. He maintains a good deal of tension, treating both the concerns of history and his main characters quite fairly. It is a good, solid film that makes one wonder why his thematically related Calm at Sea has yet to land an American distributor. Recommended for patrons of French cinema, Diplomacy opens this Wednesday (10/15) at New York’s Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 14th, 2014 at 7:46pm.

By Joe Bendel. Even in laidback Australia, cops are still cops. It’s not like they’re issued a Fosters along with their gun and badge. A drunken driving incident could cost a good copper like Det. Mal Toohey everything, but the subsequent cover-up will have even greater implications in Matthew Saville’s Felony, which opens this Friday in New York.

Toohey’s long planned drug raid was a spectacular success. The only wrinkle was the slug he took in the vest. Hailed as a hero, he spent the night celebrating with his colleagues. Unfortunately, he clips a cyclist on the way home. As a decent person, Toohey immediately calls it in, but plays the role of witness rather than an involved party. As it happens, veteran detective Carl Summer and his goody-two-shoes new partner Jim Melic are on patrol nearby. After a quick private caucus with Toohey, Summer molds his story into something that will fit the scene.

Obviously, this is not an incident Summer wants to revisit, but Melic cannot let it go, in part due to his attraction to the comatose boy’s Indian mother. While Summer ought to be able to bluff and bully him into line, Toohey starts complicating matters with his inconvenient guilt-tripping.

Written by co-star Joel Edgerton (the future Uncle Owen in the next batch of Stars Wars prequels), Felony is a cop story long on angst and short on firearms discharge. It is a good vehicle for Edgerton’s brooding chops, but Tom Wilkinson really steals the show as Summer, the darkly complex veteran. He is truly one of the best in the business. Wisely, as Toohey and Melic, Edgerton and Jai Courtney go the quiet, understated route, rather than try to compete with the wonderfully acerbic persona Wilkinson creates. In contrast, the women in Felony do not have much to do, but at least Melissa George gets one good scene as Toohey’s concerned wife.

Saville skillfully contrasts the nocturnal noir vibe of the detectives’ world with the disorienting sunshine of regular life. Felony’s themes and conflicts are not exactly undiscovered territory, but they provide plenty of grist for the talented co-stars to dig into. It is a solid cop morality play that gets a further boost from Wilkinson’s crafty presence. Recommended for fans of the cast and supporters of Australian cinema, Felony opens this Friday (10/17) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 14th, 2014 at 7:46pm.

By Joe Bendel. Xiao Hong became a patron literary saint for Chinese leftists, but she was often done wrong by her comrades, particularly those she was romantically involved with. She was one of the first to give voice to China’s peasantry, but her later work became increasingly less political, despite the wars ravaging Republican China. Her short life and problematic loves are dramatized in Ann Hui’s intimate epic The Golden Era, which opens this Friday in New York.

Xiao never had an easy existence, despite being born into a land-owning family. Her mother died at an early age, leaving her and her protective grandfather at the mercy of her physically and emotionally abusive father. Rebelling against an arranged marriage, Xiao tried to elope with the man she thought she loved, only to find herself abandoned in a financial lurch. This pattern will repeat itself, but with subtle variations.

Soon, Xiao takes up with her colleague and savior Xiao Jun, who is initially quite taken with her beauty and talent. Yet, the latter becomes an issue when she is recognized as the superior writer. They will come together and break apart several times, while great macro-geopolitical forces sweep across China.

Like most of their milieu, the unrelated but profoundly linked Xiaos are drawn to Mao’s Reds, but for different reasons. Xiao Jun seeks to compensate for his literary failings as a revolutionary, whereas Xiao Hong feels personal loyalties to comrades such as the thoroughly radicalized Ding Ling. Of course, since Xiao announces her ultimate death right at the start of the film, her ever declining health obviously portends a suitably tragic end, but she will experience the Japanese invasion and yet another ill-fated love affair first.

Considering the politicization of Xiao’s legacy, the ideological agnosticism of Hui’s film is rather remarkable. In fact, it comes at a particularly interesting time, with students and capitalists alike taking to Hong Kong’s streets to protest for genuine democracy. Nevertheless, it has been chosen as Hong Kong’s official Academy submission for foreign language film (appropriately it will also screen next month as part of the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Hong Kong Cinema series).

More than anything, Golden Era is a deeply personal woman’s story that happens to be set against a sweeping historical backdrop. In many ways, it is reminiscent of Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage, covering a similar time period and periodically using characters as third wall-breaking commentators. The film even takes on further meta-significance with the casting of Tang Wei as the “scandalous” Xiao, given the Chinese film authorities’ rumored obstructions to her career in the wake of her controversial sex scenes in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution.

Regardless, Tang perfectly balances Xiao’s delicate sensitivity and pseudo-proletarian grit. There are plenty of screen actresses who could supply her beauty, but she also credibly conveys Xiao’s intelligence. It is her film and she makes it work from start to finish. Still, Feng Shaofeng delivers some of his best work yet, bringing out real human dimensions in Xiao Jun, rather than playing him as a simple cad or a revolutionary stock figure. However, amongst the large cast of supporting characters, only Ding Jiali stands out as their stately literary benefactor, Lu Xun.

Clocking in sixty seconds under the three hour mark, Golden Era could arguably stand a bit of a trim, yet the third act still feels a bit rushed. Frankly, it just seems like the dramatic spark dims when Xiao and Xiao separate. Nevertheless, they supply the guts of the film and they are definitely worth seeing. Recommended for fans of historical dramas, The Golden Era opens this Friday (10/17) in New York at the AMC Empire, via China Lion.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 14th, 2014 at 7:45pm.

By Joe Bendel. Kylie Bucknell is in for the mother of all groundings. She is a bad kid, but she discovers there is something downright evil lurking about her mother’s home. Unfortunately, that is where she must serve her sentence of court-mandated house arrest in writer-director-editor Gerard Johnstone’s Housebound, which opens this Friday in select cities.

Bucknell fell in with the criminal element at its dumbest. After her last escapade, she and her ankle bracelet have been confined to her estranged mother’s house. Miriam Bucknell always told her it was a former bed & breakfast, but as things start going bump in the night, she soon discovers it had been a halfway house for disturbed youths that was shuttered after some sort of ominous scandal.

Is she in fact being haunted? To answer this question, she enlists the help of Amos, the security contractor monitoring her bracelet signal, who conveniently lives in the neighborhood. At first, he is a willing accomplice, but they soon encounter more mayhem than he bargained for.

While there is nothing awe-inspiringly original about Housebound, its horror movie mechanics are uncommonly good. Johnstone dexterously juggles a succession of clever red herrings and shows a knack for attitude-heavy Kevin Williamson-esque dialogue. It is not compulsively jokey, but there is humor in all the appropriate spots. Nor is it as gory as horror fans might expect, but it still pushes all the right buttons.

The real key to the film is the evolving rapport between Morgana O’Reilly and Glen-Paul Waru, as Bucknell and Amos, respectively. Their bickering has an edge but it is not overwritten. It is also a relatively fresh basis for a cinematic relationship on paper that works quite well in practice. Frankly, they seem to bring out the best in each other, because O’Reilly’s scenes with her mother and head-shrinker do not have the same zip. However, Ross Harper has some nice moments with her as the taciturn step-dad, Graeme.

Along with Danny Mulheron’s Fresh Meat, Housebound proves New Zealand should hold more interest for genre fans beyond providing the backdrop for Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies. Although not as pure “horror” as it sounds, Housebound provides a nifty macabre fix. Recommended rather enthusiastically for cult movie patrons, Housebound opens this Friday (10/17) in select markets.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 14th, 2014 at 7:45pm.